Kryviy Rih, Ukraine — Russia accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out a daring airstrike on an oil depot on Russian territory on Friday morning. The regional governor said two Ukrainian helicopters attacked the fuel plant in Belgorod, some 20 miles inside Russia, and the video showed storage tanks on fire.
A US official confirmed to CBS News senior national security correspondent David Martin that Ukrainian helicopters carried out the attack, and another a few days earlier against a munitions depot in the same area. The official told Martin there were concerns in Washington over how Russia might respond to the strikes.
Ukrainian officials did not claim responsibility for the attack itself, but as CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams reports, it was a significant move by Ukrainian forces.
A video screengrab shows firefighters responding to a fire that broke out at a fuel depot in Belgorod, Russia, which the regional governor blamed on an April 1, 2022 attack by Ukrainian military helicopters. Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations/Handout/Anadolu/Getty
Russian troops continue to attack Ukrainian cities. They were charged on Thursday with preventing food and medical supplies from entering the besieged southern port city of Mariupol and preventing refugees from getting out, despite Moscow’s agreement to open a humanitarian corridor.
Russia has bombarded Mariupol and other southern and eastern Ukrainian cities with artillery and airstrikes for more than a month, but attempts to advance deeper into the country with ground forces have hit a wall and in some places have been pushed back.
West of Zaporizhia, CBS News foreign correspondent Holly Williams encountered some of the Ukrainian forces who opposed them.
Assessment of Putin’s state of mind at the beginning of the Ukraine conflict in the sixth week 04:45
In the farming village of Mala Shesternia, as in most parts of Ukraine, the Russian soldiers were unwanted invaders. Residents have fled, but Colonel Serhii Romashko told CBS News his men retook Mala Shesternia five days ago, killing some Russians and capturing others.
Their clothes and shoes are still there, even their cooking pots. Romashko said the Russians were being used as cannon fodder – with so little food that they were looting the locals.
One of the most notable Russian moves this week was confirmed on Thursday by Energoatom, Ukraine’s national nuclear power plant operator, who said the last Russian forces occupying the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear plant had withdrawn.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Russian troops digging trenches in the still-contaminated forests around Chernobyl had been exposed to radiation, but there was no immediate confirmation of reports that many were sick.
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The global nuclear enforcement agency IAEA said Thursday it was still assessing the situation at Chernobyl but “could not confirm reports of Russian forces receiving high doses of radiation” in the exclusion zone around the power plant.
The Russian troops from Chernobyl were reportedly on their way to Ukraine’s border with Belarus. US and British officials said this week that while the Putin regime said it would “drastically reduce” military operations around Kyiv and the northeastern city of Chernihiv to facilitate ongoing peace talks, Russia is really expected to recover its ailing forces to regroup in Belarus and elsewhere under their control to stage a new offensive in the Donbass regions of eastern Ukraine.
As Williams reported, the Russians have war machines that Ukraine can only dream of, but Ukrainian forces are destroying them, including two armored personnel carriers they spotted on a single stretch of road near Mala Shesternia.
Photos: Inside the Russian invasion of Ukraine 60 photos
Colonel Romashko told her three Russians had miraculously escaped from one of the wrecked vehicles and are now being treated at a Ukrainian hospital.
“We will defeat them,” he said. “I feel victorious.”
Ukrainian resistance has also driven the Russians out of the town of Irpin, north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. But the cost is plain to see as this week a line of body bags lined a street in the city – people butchered in what Vladimir Putin calls his “special military operation”.
The Russians also left behind deadly weapons in Mala Shesternia, including a field covered with anti-tank mines. An unexploded rocket-propelled grenade lay in the front yard of a house.
Putin sent his soldiers to conquer a country that only wants to be free – and his war is killing both Ukrainians and Russians.
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